Marc Maron was a parent-scarred, angst-filled, drug-dabbling, love-starved comedian who dreamed of a simple life: a wife, a home, a sitcom to call his own. But instead he woke up one day to find himself fired from his radio job, surrounded by feral cats, and emotionally and financially annihilated by a divorce from a woman he thought he loved. He tried to heal his broken heart through whatever means he could find - minor-league hoarding, Viagra addiction, accidental racial profiling, cat fancying, flying airplanes with his mind - but nothing seemed to work. It was only when he was stripped down to nothing that he found his way back.

The Jerusalem Syndrome: My Life as a Reluctant Messiah

The Jerusalem Syndrome is a genuine psychological phenomenon that often strikes visitors to the Holy Land - the delusion that they are suddenly direct vessels for the voice of God. Marc Maron seems to have a distinctly American version of the Jerusalem Syndrome, which has led him on a lifelong quest for religious significance and revelation in the most unlikely of places.

Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life From an Addiction to Film

New York Times best-selling author, comedian, and actor Patton Oswalt shares his entertaining memoir about coming of age as a performer and writer in the late '90s while obsessively watching classic films at the legendary New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Between 1995 and 1999, Patton Oswalt lived with an unshakeable addiction. It wasn't drugs, alcohol, or sex. It was film.

Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

Rising young comedian Moshe Kasher is lucky to be alive. He started using drugs when he was just 12. At that point, he had already been in psychoanlysis for eight years. By the time he was 15, he had been in and out of several mental institutions, drifting from therapy to rehab to arrest to...you get the picture. But Kasher in the Rye is not an "eye opener" to the horrors of addiction. It's a hilarious memoir about the absurdity of it all.

Zombie Spaceship Wasteland: A Book by Patton Oswalt

Oswalt combines memoir with uproarious humor, from snow forts to Dungeons & Dragons to gifts from Grandma that had to be explained. He remem­bers his teen summers spent working in a movie Cineplex and his early years doing stand-up. Readers are also treated to several graphic elements, includ­ing a vampire tale for the rest of us and some greeting cards with a special touch.

The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee

From the outrageously filthy and oddly innocent comedienne Sarah Silverman comes a memoir—her first book—that is at once shockingly personal, surprisingly poignant, and still pee-in-your-pants funny. If you like Sarah’s television show The Sarah Silverman Program, or memoirs such as Chelsea Handler’s Are You There Vodka? It’s Me Chelsea and Artie Lange’s Too Fat to Fish, you’ll love The Bedwetter.

I Drink for a Reason

After a decade spent in isolation in the Ugandan jungles thinking about stuff, David Cross has written his first book. Known for roles on the small screen such as "never-nude" Tobias Funke on Arrested Development and the role of "David" in Mr. Show with Bob And David, as well as a hugely successful stand-up routine full of sharp-tongued rants and rages, Cross has carved out his place in American comedy.

The Smartest Book in the World: A Lexicon of Literacy, a Rancorous Reportage, a Concise Curriculum of Cool

The Smartest Book in the World is based on Proops' sensational, iTunes Top 10 podcast. The audiobook is a rollicking reference guide to the most essential areas of knowledge in Proops' universe, from the noteworthy names of the ancient world and baseball to the movies you must see and the albums you must hear.

Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living

Growing a perfect moustache, grilling red meat, wooing a woman - who better to deliver this tutelage than the always charming, always manly Nick Offerman, best known as Parks and Recreation's Ron Swanson? Combining his trademark comic voice and very real expertise in woodworking - he runs his own woodshop - Paddle Your Own Canoe features tales from Offerman's childhood in small-town Minooka, Illinois, to his theater days in Chicago, beginnings as a carpenter/actor and the hilarious and magnificent seduction of his now-wife Megan Mullally.

Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers

The star of Parks and Recreation and author of the New York Times best seller Paddle Your Own Canoe returns with a second book that humorously highlights 21 figures from our nation's history, from her inception to present day - Nick's personal pantheon of "great Americans".

Joe says:"Buy it and listen, or buy it and don't. I recommend the former."

Girl in a Band: A Memoir

Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth, fashion icon, and role model for a generation of women, now tells her story - a memoir of life as an artist, of music, marriage, motherhood, independence, and as one of the first women of rock and roll, written with the lyricism and haunting beauty of Patti Smith's Just Kids.

Happy Endings: The Tales of a Meaty-Breasted Zilch

Comedian Jim Norton is dirty...really dirty...the kind of dirty that makes The Aristocrats look like a knock-knock joke. Fortunately for him, his kind of dirty humor has earned him the distinction of being third microphone on the immensely popular Opie & Anthony syndicated radio show. In Happy Endings, Jim brings his raw, hilarious, and offensively honest comedy to Audible® listeners.

The Coloring Book: A Comedian Solves Race Relations in America

Colin Quinn has noticed a trend during his decades on the road - that Americans' increasing political correctness and sensitivity have forced us to tiptoe around the subjects of race and ethnicity altogether. Colin wants to know: What are we all so afraid of? Every ethnic group has differences, everyone brings something different to the table, and this diversity should be celebrated, not denied. So why has acknowledging these cultural differences become so taboo?

Self-Inflicted Wounds: Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation

Aisha Tyler, comedian, actress, cohost of CBS's The Talk, star of Archer, and creator of the top-ranked podcast Girl on Guy, serves up a spectacular collection of her own self-inflicted wounds. From almost setting herself on fire, to vomiting on a boy she liked, to getting drunk and sleeping through the SATs, to going into crushing debt to pay for college and then throwing away her degree to become a comedian, Aisha's life has been a series of spectacularly epic fails. And she's got the scars to prove it. Literally.

Modern Romance: An Investigation

At some point every one of us embarks on a journey to find love. We meet people, date, get into and out of relationships, all with the hope of finding someone with whom we share a deep connection. This seems standard now, but it's wildly different from what people did even just decades ago. Single people today have more romantic options than at any point in human history.

Dear Mrs. Fitzsimmons (The Audiobook)

It's what he was raised to do. Most parents would hide or destroy any evidence so clearly demonstrating their child's failures, but-lucky for us-Greg Fitzsimmons's family has preserved each mistake in its original envelope like a trophy in a case, lest he ever forget where he came from.

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

In the mid-70s, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit forever. Born Standing Up is, in his own words, the story of "why I did stand-up and why I walked away".

So You've Been Publicly Shamed

From the Sunday Times top ten bestselling author of The Psychopath Test, a captivating and brilliant exploration of one of our world's most underappreciated forces: shame. 'It's about the terror, isn't it?' 'The terror of what?' I said. 'The terror of being found out.' For the past three years, Jon Ronson has travelled the world meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us - people who, say, made a joke on social media that came out badly, or made a mistake at work.

Hollywood Said No!: Orphaned Film Scripts, Bastard Scenes, and Abandoned Darlings from the Creators of Mr. Show

Hollywood Said No! reveals the full-length, never-before-seen scripts for many would-be films, including Bob and David Make a Movie (fleshed out with brand-new storyboards by acclaimed artist Mike Mitchell) and Hooray For America! (a satirical power-house indictment of all that you hold dear).

Publisher's Summary

People make a mess.

Marc Maron was a parent-scarred, angst-filled, drug-dabbling, love-starved comedian who dreamed of a simple life: a wife, a home, a sitcom to call his own. But instead he woke up one day to find himself fired from his radio job, surrounded by feral cats, and emotionally and financially annihilated by a divorce from a woman he thought he loved. He tried to heal his broken heart through whatever means he could find - minor-league hoarding, Viagra addiction, accidental racial profiling, cat fancying, flying airplanes with his mind - but nothing seemed to work. It was only when he was stripped down to nothing that he found his way back.

Attempting Normal is Marc Maron’s journey through the wilderness of his own mind, a collection of explosively, painfully, addictively funny stories that add up to a moving tale of hope and hopelessness, of failing, flailing, and finding a way. From standup to television to his outrageously popular podcast, WTF with Marc Maron, Marc has always been a genuine original, a disarmingly honest, intensely smart, brutally open comic who finds wisdom in the strangest places. This is his story of the winding, potholed road from madness and obsession and failure to something like normal, the thrillingly comic journey of a sympathetic f--kup who’s trying really hard to do better without making a bigger mess. Most of us will relate.

What the Critics Say

10 Best Audiobooks of 2013 (Salon)

"An already enjoyable memoir, the audio version benefits from the improvisatory ease Maron developed as a stand-up comic, Air America radioman and host of the popular 'WTF with Marc Maron' podcast, from which much of the book's content was developed. The audiobook, which includes excerpts from the podcast, veers wildly from personal history to confession to documentary to punch line to psychoanalysis to intellectual rant to anti-intellectual armoring to inside joke to dead serious to deflatingly unhyperbolic to high to crude to political to nostalgic to philosophical to historical to proud to self-abasing, and it keeps the listener happily off-balance." (Kyle Minor, Salon)

"I’ve known Marc for years and I can tell you first hand that he’s passionate, fearless, honest, self-absorbed, neurotic, and screamingly funny." (David Cross)

If you could sum up Attempting Normal in three words, what would they be?

honest ... complex ... informative

What aspect of Marc Maron’s performance would you have changed?

Mr. Maron reads a little fast. Perhaps that's how he does his stand-up so maybe I'm the silly one judging him on how he does his regular routine with a unique comedic timing. Yet, I felt every chapter was genuinely something he endured through his life. Perhaps, he simply read with genuine passion.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I didn't want to listen to it all in one sitting only because I'm a commute-driving/daily workout audiobook listener who works an already overly stimulating job, and this book was quite a lot in one sitting. However, Mr. Maron was fascinating in pieces! For those who have less stimulating lives, this audiobook will really get you thinking.

Any additional comments?

The lives of comedians are very perplexing to me, and yet, somehow I always wanted to know more about them. Mr. Maron did just that! While telling us all about his life, he told me about the lives of the best comics, and I appreciated that. But if Mr. Maron has any other books, I'll definitely get them, but it'll be in book-form - words on paper - that is.

Mark Maron would make a fantastic fictional character. I would sit on the edge of my seat waiting for the next adventure of this excentric esoteric person. Mark Maron is not a fictional character, and that is.... distubing... . I hope I never meet him in person because I would be frightened of what inter-dialoge he may be having with himself about me. I think stand up comic was a great career choice for him, I don't know where else he would fit in normal society.

Listen to the book the first chance you get, don't read it. The author reading the book really makes it perfect.

Would you consider the audio edition of Attempting Normal to be better than the print version?

I haven't read it but probably, Marc's voice really sells the jokes and had me loling every second of my life

Who was your favorite character and why?

Marc

What does Marc Maron bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Inflection

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Attempting Normal

Any additional comments?

"I'm so fucking pissed, this book made my laugh so fucking hard I pissed my fucking pants in the car, I had to drive home in my fucking pissed pants and explain that to my wife who was fucking angry as shit about that because they were expensive chinos that she had got me from banana republic for my birthday if your gonna listen to this fucking book for the love of Christ get some depends diapers and let loose because this fuckers gonna have you rolling on the floor spraying your piss hole dry!"

I'm sure this book will polarise listeners / readers. If you have your life all together, then you will most likely thoroughly dislike this needy, self centred and often pathetic man, and hate the book. If however, you have you own special basket of issues you wrestle with on a daily basis, chances are you will warm to and be charmed by this needy, self centred and often pathetic man, and love the book.I loved the book - its one of the best I've heard on audible. Laugh out loud funny in places.

Absolutely. Marc is not only funny, but manages to be amazingly honest while doing so. His accounts of his own experiences are both harrowing, and hilarious at the same time. His world view is different from most, and the way things are described is evidence to this.

What did you like best about this story?

I don't recall one single part that stood out, however I remember laughing out loud several times which is quite rare for me. There are several stories that are too outrageous to be made up, and another few that seem to be quite easy to relate to my own life and experiences.

What about Marc Maron’s performance did you like?

These questions are fairly annoying...

Marc did extremely well, and I'm fairly positive that after listening to the podcast for a while that I wouldn't have been able to accept someone else reading this book. His voice is expressive in a way that brings out the tone of what he is trying to say.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I almost did. I listened to most of it during a car ride, and the rest while working.

Yes we are good, very good in fact. If you're a WTF listener, jump right in the water's fine. If you're not a listener, WTF? Who wouldn't want to delve into the dark, self-effacing, thought provoking mind of Marc Maron? Read it, enjoy it and pass it on. They'll thank you for it.

Marc Maron reads his life with a fearless, original, unique voice that makes you want to be his next door neighbor, now that he seems to be done with the screaming fights, anyway. His honesty about private relationship matters, addiction, and other behavior that would be mortifying for anyone else to admit seems so matter of fact when shared by Maron.

I am a road warrior too in my career, though not as an artist. But I can relate to so much of what the author sees and enjoys from place to place. It was on a business trip last fall when I happened to find Maron doing a workout at a little stage in Hollywood, and I had the extraordinary luck to get a front row seat for 8 bucks.

I could listen to this big-hearted, humble, damaged, narcissistic, earnest and wonderful man hold forth for hours. So I think I'll start from the beginning again. And Marc - I think Boomer went looking for Moxie. But I hope he found the lady with the Fancy Feast.

A very funny,clever, witty insecure and insightful man who made me laugh loud out. The fact that he likes cats gives him an added appeal in my view and his (presumably) honest portrayal of his love life was a joy...in parts. I had never heard of him previously but would certainly buy any further books he writes. Highly recommended

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

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